Welcome to fortytwofifty. This is where I will be posting useful photo information I come across during the semester, things like links to photographers' websites, recommended readings, inspiring quotes, and much more.
I hope you will check in often. Look, learn, and enjoy!
In December of 1968, Seth Siegelaub and Jack Wendler published The XEROX BOOK, an exhibition produced entirely in book form. The project included seven contributing conceptual artists: Carl Andre, Robert Barry, Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, Douglas Huebler, Robert Morris and Lawrence Weiner.
The Kadist Art Foundation in San Francisco recently spoke to Jack Wendler about The XEROX BOOK offering a unique glimpse into the history of this celebrated project.
No photographs here, but very visually compelling presentation of dots! maybe think photographs??
LUDWIGSHAFEN.- Visitors adhere circular stickers in a room installation at the exhibition “Dot.Systems - from Pointillism to Pixel” by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama at the Wilhelm-Hack Museum in Ludwigshafen, Germany. Tthe exhibition which will run until Sept. 30, the room was absolutely white. The installation was created by all the visitors who attached the colorful stickers. AP Photo/dapd, Torsten Silz.
Three years ago, the German conceptual artist Thomas Demand saw a startling video on YouTube that captured the chaotic scene inside a cruise ship being tossed about by a storm in the South Pacific. Everything not bolted down — chairs, tables, bottles, cartons, people — could be seen sliding back and forth across the floor as the ship rocked violently. But where most viewers might have forwarded the link to their friends, Demand decided to recreate the scene, minus the people, entirely out of paper and cardboard, then film it.
Here, an exclusive clip from Demand’s film:
Demand has long been known for building and photographing realistic, life-size models of actual environments. The resulting pictures are the final works of art — so realistic that people often don’t realize they’re looking at paper constructions — while the sculptural models themselves are destroyed and never exhibited.
The “Pacific Sun” video (named after the cruise ship) consists of 2,400 still images all together. The animators took three and a half months to meticulously re-create every object’s path across the room. The resulting video — that’s a sneak peek above — can be seen starting this evening at theMatthew Marks Gallery at 523 West 24th Street in New York, with other new works by Demand.
This week, I spoke to Demand about how he works. Here are some edited highlights from our conversation:
Why are there no people in your images?
I think the imagination works better if you don’t have people, because if there are people, you look at it as an anecdote. If you have an empty space that in this case is animated and has lots of signs of life, it is actually like reading a novel or something. You basically create in your own mind what is happening or what the space represents, and for me, that is much more interesting.
A remarkable thing I have to say is when I started doing this, it was a slapstick-movie thing, and it was interesting and peculiar, and I thought it’s just absurd but also it has a certain beauty. Then the tsunami happened in Japan, and then the cruise ship hit the rock off the coast of northern Italy. It was no longer slapstick. The context in which the image would be seen changed throughout the making of the film.
Thomas Demand
Those disasters happened after you had begun?
I was in the middle of it when the tsunami happened. I hired people. I rented a studio in California. I had a whole workshop set up, building all these chairs and whatever else we needed. There were between 8 to 12 animators on set working 12-hour days for three and a half months. There were 55 chairs. The people we were working with on the project were unbelievable — fantastically dedicated. I was told there are only about 35 animators in L.A. We basically had 12 of those animators for three and a half months.
Thomas Demand
The animators do what, exactly?
In recent years, stop-motion animation has become very popular. “Fantastic Mr. Fox” is an example of this. People like the handcrafted quality of it. You can’t really fake it with C.G.I. I initially thought about doing it digitally, but in the end decided to do it with stop-motion animation because it is so beautiful. Everything was made of paper. They were really fragile objects. The fragility of the objects gives the scene its beauty. Plus, all the C.G.I. people I spoke to just said it would be too complicated to do virtually, and it will never look like the real thing, so we should really try to do it in animation.
Thomas Demand
One of the reasons why I moved to L.A. was because I thought it was kind of a stable climate, sunshine every day. It’s sunny, but what I didn’t have on my list of things — what I didn’t consider — were the earthquakes, the tiny little shakes of the earth every day. When we would start in the morning, we would always see a little change in the placement of the objects from the night before.
Thomas Demand
I didn’t realize there were so many tiny movements every day.
Every day something is moving. Like 1.2 on the Richter scale or something.
Thomas Demand
Is that something filmmakers there are always dealing with?
I don’t know. Nobody seems to talk about it. If I say earthquake, everybody in L.A. rolls their eyes and says, Thank God it wasn’t the big one yet. For animation, it’s terrible because these objects are all moving a little fraction. It was really a disaster. It was funny as hell. That’s why we needed a lot of people — because we had to adjust all this. It’s so minimal you can’t really do anything about it, but that’s also quite charming in the end because everything is kind of vibrating.
Thomas Demand
Any movement, like a ketchup bottle falling off a table, the animators would have to imagine that over a stretch of a week or something, but it’s going to be only three seconds in the film, and it takes them a week to make it. You need imagination to know how it actually falls down and how all this is fitting together. We had scripts for every object, but that’s another very long story.
Thomas Demand
***** Back in 1997, the magazine commissioned Demand to re-create a massage parlor for a special photo issue devoted to Times Square; more recently, to accompany a cover story in Nov. 2008 on executive power, he constructed a life-size version of the Oval Office.
Thomas Demand for The New York TimesDemand’s re-creation of a massage parlor from our Times Square issue from 1997.
bitforms gallery is pleased to announce its fourth solo exhibition with Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-
Hemmer. The exhibition features the United States premiere of two projects: Voice Array, a participatory
environment that debuted last Fall in Sydney, Australia, at the Museum of Contemporary Art; and Last Breath,
which was part of the 11th Bienal de la Habana. Concurrent with the New York exhibition, on September 20,
Lozano-Hemmer will also unveil Open Air, a new commission by the Association for Public Art in Philadelphia.
Since his emergence in the 1990s, Lozano-Hemmer has mixed the disparate fields of digital media, robotics,
medical science, performance art, and lived experience into interactive artworks. Probably best known for his
large-scale “Antimonuments”, which challenge traditional notions of site-specificity, he focuses on the idea of
creating relationship-specific work through connective interfaces. Often employing vanguard technologies,
many of his projects utilize robotics, custom software, projections, internet links, cell phones, sensors, LEDs,
cameras, and tracking systems.
The communal spaces that Lozano-Hemmer creates are an experiment in public authorship. Technology in his
work activates seamless “encounters of art, self and the kinetic force of collective memory,” writes Claudia
Arozqueta (Artforum.com, Jan 2012). As a conductor of this experience, he seduces the audience into
participation, using tactile sensation, repetition and the simulated presence of an individual.
At the gallery entrance, Last Breath is a robotic installation that stores and circulates the breath of a person
forever, between a bellows and a brown paper bag. The apparatus is automatically activated 10,000 times per
day, the typical respiratory frequency for an adult at rest. With each breath the piece generates quiet sounds
from the bellows, the motor and the crackling of the paper bag. The piece also sighs 158 times a day. For the
exhibition in New York, the piece is a biometric portrait of Cuban singer Omara Portuondo. A short video of her
recording her breath into the device is shown on a small screen mounted to the wall.
Filling the gallery’s far wall, Voice Array is a construction for vocal improvisation that uses blinking LEDs and a
customized intercom system of audio playback and recording. Capturing hundreds of voices and translating
each one into a series of light flashes, the piece stores a unique pattern as a loop in the first light of the array,
until the next participant speaks into the intercom. Each new recording is pushed along its long horizontal band
of LEDs, as sounds of the voices gradually accumulate. When the first voice reaches the other side of the
piece, the participant’s phrase is once again released as sound, punctuated by the staggering pulsation of all
the lights in tandem. The ever-changing voices stored by the piece play back through a directional speaker,
during moments of less activity. Click here to read and see more.
(CNN) -- Iconic Pop artist Andy Warhol is often quoted for his statement, "In the future, everybody will be world-famous for 15 minutes." Twenty-five years after his death, his influence on contemporary art has well surpassed the 15-minute mark.
This week, 1.2 million limited-edition cans of condensed tomato soup with labels inspired by his Pop art go on sale. The specially designed Campbell's soup cans pay tribute to his lively color palette, using orange, blue, pink and teal to spruce up the familiar design. The labels commemorate the 50th anniversary of Warhol's famed art piece "32 Campbell's Soup Cans."
Some of Warhol's famous quotes are printed on the Campbell's cans, too, including "Pop art is for everyone." This quote is significant as his wide-ranging body of work helped "blur the boundaries between high and low culture," said Michael Hermann, director of licensing at The Andy Warhol Foundation. Warhol appealed to a massive audience from all walks of life, he said.
Warhol's humble roots stem from a working-class neighborhood in Pittsburgh, where he was born in 1928. As an adult, he moved to New York City, where he set up a studio and built his fame and fortune. His enormous body of work included multiple mediums and featured subjects ranging from celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe to simple, everyday items such as a banana.
"I believe Warhol's popularity is certainly due in part to his uncanny ability to present the familiar from unexpected perspectives through visually and conceptually impactful works of art. However, it seems his influence today comes as much from his biography as someone who embodied the American dream and celebrated creativity and individuality," said Hermann.
When once asked why he painted the soup cans, Warhol noted, "I used to have the same (Campbell's soup) lunch every day for 20 years."
He was also known to say, "I was looking for something that was the essence of nothing, and that was it." His unique style of artistic expression and world view is credited for launching his career and the Pop art movement.
Art collectors have paid millions of dollars for some of Warhol's pieces, but shoppers at Target, where the limited-edition soup cans are on sale, will have to shell out only 75 cents for a 10.75-ounce can.
"What continues to amaze me is that 25 years after his death, Warhol continues to have a profound influence on our culture," said Hermann. "For me, this is a true testament to his genius, and I can only imagine that Andy would have loved shopping at Target for this soup."
Campbell Soup Company never commissioned Warhol to paint the original soup cans. Former president and CEO of the company, William Beverly Murphy, initially had reservations about Warhol's work 50 years ago, and Campbell took a "wait and see approach" before fully supporting him. Now, the company takes great pride in its association with the iconic artist.
"Thanks to Andy Warhol's inspired paintings, Campbell's soup will always be linked to the Pop art movement," Ed Carolan, vice president and general manager, of Campbell North America stated in a news release to CNN.
"It is only fitting that 50 years later, we celebrate the enduring legacy of these two American icons by coming full circle and bringing his art back to the Campbell's soup cans that provided him with inspiration," noted Hermann.
The Campbell's soup labels were produced under license from The Andy Warhol Foundation, a not-for-profit corporation that promotes the visual arts. Some revenue generated from the project will fund the foundation's endowment, from which it distributes grants that support the "creation, presentation and documentation of contemporary visual art," according to Hermann.
In addition to the soup cans, Campbell has partnered with The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as a sponsor of the educational programs associated with an exhibit paying tribute to Warhol. The show, "Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years,"opens September 18. Warhol's piece "Big Campbell's Soup Can, 19¢" is included in the exhibition, along with some of his other famous works.
PITTSBURGH, PA.-The Andy Warhol Museum announces a new interactive experience that allows visitors to participate in a recreation of Andy Warhol’s process of filming a Screen Test. This interactive experience is prominently located within the museum’s film and video galleries on the 6th floor, where Warhol’s Screen Tests are on permanent display.
Between 1964 and 1966, Warhol created almost five hundred of these film portraits of famous and anonymous visitors to his studio, including Salvador DalÃ, Dennis Hopper and Edie Sedgwick. Warhol filmed his subjects using a stationary, Bolex camera loaded with 100-foot rolls of black and white 16mm film. Sitters were instructed to sit still for about three minutes, the length of time it took for the roll of film to run through the camera. He later projected the silent Screen Tests in slow motion, thereby extending their duration to four minutes and imbuing them with a dreamlike stillness. During the 1960s, these films were rarely shown in public, but were often shown at The Factory.
In a gallery reminiscent of Warhol’s Silver Factory studio, museum visitors are invited to create their own screen test utilizing a computer touch screen, a moveable backdrop, a specially modified vintage camera, and twin studio lights. Upon completion, the visitor’s screen test is transformed digitally from real time to slow motion and pushed to the Internet, where their work of art will be available on a custom webpage. The screen test can then be shared on various social media channels.
“With media so transformed in contemporary life, it is often difficult for visitors to imagine how things were done almost 50 years ago. This interactive experience offers the opportunity to gain insight into how Warhol created one of his most significant bodies of work by demonstrating the process by which he made these films. The visitors’ finished screen tests will reveal the subtle nuances that made Warhol’s films transcend their medium to become visual masterpieces,” stated Geralyn Huxley, curator of film & video.
“In a most Warholian gesture, we are riding the wave of innovation and new technologies in launching this fun and exciting interactive feature that will allow our guests to achieve their own 15 minutes of fame here at The Andy Warhol Museum. We are always striving to improve our visitor’s experiences at the museum, and this Screen Test Interactive project allows everyone to learn about Warhol’s process while making their own work of art that they can then share on various social media platforms with friends and Warhol fans around the world. It is our core mission to promote and share the work of Andy Warhol with our global audience, and I am thrilled to see what conversations emerge thanks to this cool new project,” stated Eric Shiner, director of The Warhol.
The Screen Test Interactive project was created by The Warhol team with help from Pittsburgh-based technology startup Interbots, and designer Michael Johnson and developer Evan Tahler.
One would think that reality would remain constant, but as we learn and develop, reality and our experiences of it changes with us. Now on view at Site Santa Fe, More Real? Art in the Age of Truthiness, bring together more than 25 international artists who question the stability of reality. For our look back into the DS Archives, we bring you the 2008 exhibition at the Hirshorn Museum, The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality, and the Moving Image.
The following article was originally published on August 19, 2008 by Catherine Wagley:
Washington DC’s Hirshhorn Museum has embraced the history and technology of cinema, launching a large scale video exhibition that explores the perpetually shady filmic relationship between fiction and reality. Called The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality, and the Moving Image, the exhibition is divided into two parts. The first, Dreams, ran through May 11th and focused on the imaginative capabilities of film. The second part, Realisms, is on view now.Realisms itself is divided into to sections, one of which emphasizes fictive realism – including pop culture references and Hollywood-inspired ventures – while the other emphasizes documentary-style film work.
As the above video discusses, Realism highlights the cultural, historical savvy of today’s most innovative film artists, while also probing the unique technological capacity film has to question what’s “real.” The exhibition continues through September.
Filmed in 2010 at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nice, France, Sarah Sze discusses the importance of improvisation and spontaneity during her installation process. Originally shown at her New York City gallery, Sze altered "The Uncountables (Encyclopedia)" (2010) for its reinstallation in France by incorporating locally found items. Sze's use of improvisation allows for viewers to trace her decision making process as they explore and investigate the artwork. CREDITS: Producer: Ian Forster. Consulting Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Field Producer: Agnes Jammal. Camera: Miguel Sanchez Martin. Sound: Roger Phenix. Editor: Morgan Riles & Mark Sutton. Artwork Courtesy: Sarah Sze & Tanya Bonakdar Gallery. Special Thanks: Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Nice. Theme Music: Peter Foley.
Jack Goldstein x 10,000” consists of thirty-plus years of work. The early films that put Goldstein on the map as a member of the Pictures group are there (including “The Jump,” 1978, and “MGM,” 1975), as are several immersive sculptures, text works, and records—not to mention the enormous, black-and-white paintings of the ‘80s and the paintings that followed.
Dinh Q. Le is known for his technique of weaving photographic images together; he continues in this tradition with this new series. Le investigates two highly intelligent cultures of the past: one of ancient Sumer, the other of 12th century Cambodia. Both cultures are remembered in his work through their remnants and ruins.
Magnum Contact Sheets reveals how Magnum photographers have captured and edited their best shots from the 1930s to the present. The contact sheet, a direct print of a roll or sequence of negatives, is the photographer's first look at what he or she has captured on film, and provides a uniquely intimate glimpse into their working process. It records each step on the route to arriving at an image—providing a rare behind-the-scenes sense of walking alongside the photographer and seeing through their eyes. Including both celebrated icons of photography and lesser-known surprises, the exhibition functions as an "epitaph" to the contact sheet, now rendered obsolete by digital photography. Through these fascinating and usually private images, the exhibition celebrates what and how photographers saw for nearly a century. Coinciding with the publication of Magnum Contact Sheets (Thames & Hudson), edited by ICP Curator Kristen Lubben, the exhibition includes a selection of some of the 139 contact sheets in the book.
This exhibition was made possible with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. It is organized in association with Magnum Photos.
Walter is a photo-based artist who lives and works in the Philadelphia area. He received his MFA from University of the Arts and BFA from Tyler School of Art. Currently, he is an instructor in the Fine Arts Department at Penn State Abington, as well as Montgomery County Community College. He recently completed a film, featuring a Fine Art Department colleague and a classroom of art students engaged in an end-of-year assignment that Walter wanted to document in a creative way. It's a testament to the power of collaborative artistic expression and how art inspires. Read more . . .
Over eight consecutive nights, MoMA presents a chronological exploration of the sonic and visual experiments of Kraftwerk with a live presentation of their complete repertoire in the Museum's Marron Atrium.
Paul Graham’s work belongs to the tradition of social documentary photography. He developed an innovate artistic work whose view is directed uncompromisingly at social reality. For whitetube.de he speaks about one single serie called PITTSBURGH which is exhibited in a big show of Grahams work:
The House of Photography, Hamburg, Germany 24 SEPTEMBER 2010 – 9 JANUARY 2011
